Journey of mind

Where is my mind ? a question that that came to my mind when i was trying to do something but nothing came into my mind, i have opened my laptop open YouTube, i don’t know what to search. my mind was fully blank and it’s like nothingness. So tried to find something about this thing and here is my findings –

Our minds are magic. Like a prop in an illusionist’s sleight of hand, they seems to flit from place to place- now here, now there, now-nowhere.

• Our magic of our minds is often lost in the mundane details of our daily routines, but the remarkable flexibility of our mental lives remains.
• Our minds may be directed towards the task at hand-
  • they may be here as we concentrate on our daily commute or focus on the contents of a meeting or conversation.
  • they may be there or any place other than the present situation. they may travel to an upcoming vacation, a favorite memory, or even a to-do list as the morning commute turns into a traffic jam.
  • minds can go to a third place- neither here nor there, but no-where. There may be times when our minds are blank

Mind Blanking : Where the mind goes away

Mind blanking :- when our minds are seemingly “nowhere” is defined by a lack of conscious awareness. During periods of blankness, the individual is not focally aware of any stimulation either internal or external. It is often experienced through practices such as meditation and hypnosis.

Mind blanking v/s Mind wandering

Although these two terms may look similar but they are different Mind wandering “at some point during reading (or any other activity) you realize that you were have no idea what you just read (or done), furthermore , not only thinking about the text (activity), you were thinking about something else altogether.” Mind blanking from the same previous example ” not only were you thinking about the text (activity), you were not thinking about anything else-your mind was completely blank.”

Empty mind and Spirituality

Many people connects the empty mind to the spirituality, that spirituality is all about the removing the thoughts of your mind and make it blank. Here i am sharing a short part of the book  Ma Tzu: The Empty Mirror (by Osho)

(Ma Tzu or Matsu is a Chinese sea goddess in Chinese folk religion, Chinese Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism.)

on another occasion a monk asked Ma Tzu, “What is the Buddha?”

Ma Tzu answered, “Mind is the Buddha.”

Listen very carefully because these are very great statements.

Ma Tzu answered, “Mind is the Buddha.”

The monk then asked, “What is the way?”

“No-mind is the way,” answered Ma Tzu.

Now he is being his strange self. First he says, “Mind is the Buddha.” And when asked, “What is the way?” he says, “No-mind is the Way.” He is cancelling mind and making no-mind the way. Mind becomes no-mind, if it is empty. No-mind is not some other entity. No-mind is the same entity as the mind; the difference is weather the mind is full of thoughts, or empty of thoughts. If empty, it is no-mind, if full of thoughts, it is mind.

So he did well in answering slowly because a sudden answer may not be understood. He said, “Mind is the Buddha”. It feels consoling – you have the mind, so Buddha is not far away.

The monk then asked, “What is the Way?”

And than he plays his trick. He says, “NO -mind is the Way” -you will have to empty the mind of all its content. There is no real difference. My hands are open, or my hand as a fist- it is the same thing, just different formations of the same thing.

That’s exactly what you are doing with yourself in meditation, every day, you are dropping something and gaining something deeper into your being. You are dropping some chunk of the marble and making clear at least a part of Buddha. Slowly slowly the whole Buddha arises in its totality, and in that moment you disappear. In that moment only Buddha remains in you, you are the buddha. The path , the traveler and the goal are only different stages of the same phenomenon.

REFERENCES :-

• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3784796/#:~:text=Mind%2Dblanking%E2%80%94when%20our%20minds,stimuli%2C%20either%20internal%20or%20external.
• https://www.osho.com/osho-online-library/osho-talks/buddha-the-mind-emptiness-e5de065a-f8a?p=6f2debe9a4cfe83527baaa6a2d0e0b98